‘Empire’ Recap: Cookie’s Cookies Get Exposed After Empire Gets Hacked

All hell almost breaks loose when Empire Records gets hacked.

Tonight’s episode of Empire opens on a sweet note. Angelo Dubois and Cookie are still going strong, despite Lucious’ hate tactics. It’s cute to watch them, and nice to watch Cookie happy, for once, but Angelo is running for mayor, but this is most definitely a setup for a break up. Their two different backgrounds will certainly be a hindrance.

The real drama comes in to play when Empire’s email server gets hacked. The hacker(s) leak one of [Tiana’s] demos internally at first, but the harassment gradually got worse. At first, the person demanded a million dollars every hour, but Lucious refuses to negotiate with terrorists so he hired an IT expert to help them get to the bottom of this situation.

Eventually they discover that the hacker is controlling Empire’s server remotely and is stepping their harassment up several notches. The hacker starts erasing music and then Cookie’s nudes get leaked during a company-wide meeting. She’s unbothered at first, but this is going to come back to bit her in the butt with regard to her politician boo thang. It eventually becomes clear that the person is controlling things remotely.Yikes!

Speaking of, Cookie ends up breaking up with Angelo. She felt that there are too many skeletons in her closet that could come tumbling out and ruin his mayoral campaign. He still wants to be with her, but Cookie is stubborn and refuses to change her mind. She says she’d feel bad if her past destroys his campaign so it’s a wrap.

Eventually it’s discovered that Gram—the rapper who has beef with Hakeen and Tiana—is the hacker. Lucious and co confront him and he claimed it wasn’t him, but there’s a lot of evidence showing otherwise. And you know how the Lyons do—they don’t call the cops they, bring in the goons to put the paws on him. The hack wasn’t just a nuisance to Empire, though. It was an early Christmas gift for the FBI. Tariq got ahold of some of those leaked emails, so you know he’s combing through to try to find whatever he can.

Jamal seems to have switched places with Dre in terms of being the brother with the most psychological issues. He almost od’d on pain pills. It’s redundant at this point, but hopefully his new boo can help him get it together.

And then, we find Cookie watching Angelo get interrogated by the press on TV. They’re drilling him about his affiliation with Cookie and he admitted that he was trying to get involved with her but she shut him down due to all the judgment. Then, in solidarity with Cookie and women everywhere, because of the double standard, he took his shirt off and threatened to take his pants off too if necessary. That’s when Cookie declared that she was in love with Angelo.

We close out the episode back on the hacking situation. Dre, as a result of his hard work trying to figure out who the hacker was, got promoted to president of the Empire streaming service. As it turns out, Gram wasn’t the hacker after all. Too bad he’s gonna be looking like this for a while:

Here’s the setup: We find Dre taking Nessa along with him to watch some shady business deal he had going on with Vaughn (he claimed he brought her along because he trusted her that much]. Dre hands Vaughn a bag of money. The gag is, Vaughn is the one who hacked Empire because Dre set that up. Dre knew he’d get the promotion for his “help” in figuring out who the hacker was, and Gram was an easy scapegoat. After the deal, Dre explains to Nessa (who was hiding while watching) that he knew that Lucious would never make him president of Empire records because he’s not musical like his brothers, but getting command of the streaming service puts him closer to Empire domination. So, by any means necessary, Dre is gunning for that power. You know how it is, Lyons are gonna Lyon.